The Summer Field

43 Why Cricket? because he knew Yorkshire Gentlemen thought alike. As Yorkshire county captain, Hawke had allowed a place for paid players, if they behaved. Yet the ‘best’ cricket, according to Hawke, was played for the love of it, not for money, among fellows who felt (and could afford to feel) the same way. * As Yorkshire president, Lord Hawke disapproved of the challenge match between the two leading counties of 1937, Middlesex and Yorkshire, at the end of the season. The argument beforehand showed the rival views of what the game was about. Was it for profit, in money or in kind; or for fleeting or intangible things, the applause of the crowd, your inner feeling of pride, the team? Each view was valid. Country Life in August 1937 could not see the harm in the challenge. The magazine harked back ‘to the ancient and romantic days of cricket when challenges were the order of the day’; although as it admitted, money corrupted the single- wicket matches of Lord Frederic Beauclerk (‘deeds that were ungallant and sordid’). Some could see the harm. Writing to the Yorkshire Post , an anonymous county member from Halifax feared it would ‘simply lead to cricket being commercialised like football’. Pounds, shillings and pence, or ‘£sd’ as the member put it, and ‘even a cup’ would spoil the pure, season-long competition to find the best. The four-day game went ahead — Middlesex flopped within three – because the challenge (in Country Life’s words) ‘caught the public fancy’. In truth the challenge belonged to a tradition of playing for stakes. At its most innocent, it was a way of sealing hospitality afterwards, as in July 1852 when 15 sons and grandsons of Robert Ibbotson, and wives and sweethearts, left Dungworth near Sheffield, took a specially-arranged train to Shepley near Holmfirth, picked an eleven (with scorer and umpire to spare) and played the village, ‘for a dinner’. A wager gave physical proof of winning, and was ideally something to savour later, as in September 1848 when, after a two-day match between Derby and Newark, three from each side played a single-wicket match, ‘the losers to pay for half a dozen of wine’. The match ball cost enough to be a prize for the winner – and felt as a loss by the losers, as in a July 1864 match between Star of the West and Falmouth Mechanics, ‘in a field kindly lent for the occasion by Mr Doble of Trefusus Barton’ above the Fal estuary. The Western Daily Mercury reported: ‘We regret to find that at the finish of the play an unwillingness was shown for some time on the part of the Mechanics club to deliver up the cricket ball for which the match was played and in accordance with the umpire’s decision; ultimately however the ball was handed over to the winners.’ If you played well, you earned a reward. Bentley, the Torquay professional, claimed a hat in 1858 for bowling three wickets in three balls; in May 1893, the amateur Cyril Foley was given a bat by the club. If the amateurs wanted the professionals to try harder, they offered cash, as Foley recalled of that match in his memoir Autumn Foliage. After Foley with J.THearne had put on 61 for the ninth wicket to tie the scores, the Lancashire captain Sydney Crosfield told the bowler Arthur Mold: ‘I will give you £2 to bowl the last two wickets.’ Mold did bowl Hearne. As that little story shows, the ‘talent